


The Education of Geoffrey Lestrade

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Asexual Sherlock Holmes, Caring Greg Lestrade, Great Hiatus, Greg Lestrade & John Watson Friendship, Greg Lestrade is a Good Friend, M/M, POV Greg Lestrade, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24364087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: Inspector Lestrade thought he knew everything required to survive in his world. Then he met Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
Relationships: Greg Lestrade/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes & Lestrade & John Watson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 57
Collections: Holmestice Exchange - Summer 2020





	The Education of Geoffrey Lestrade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flashforeward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashforeward/gifts).



I told Wilkins and Rance that I'd received a tip from a trusted source and we would be on stakeout that night; I'd been planning, which was why I'd locked my office for an hour after getting the telegram, I said. It was mostly true. 

When we got to that street and I saw the silhouette in the window, it came home like a punch to the stomach. The others saw it too; Wilkins only just covered his mouth before the shriek came out, and Rance staggered. The two of them together were about how I felt, but their reactions made it easier to hold myself in check. "That's right, that's who you think it is, turns out we were a bit mistaken. We're here to catch someone on his trail. Now straighten up and take a deep breath before you pitch over, Rance." So we waited, and I pretended not to notice when Wilkins wiped his eyes a few times. 

All three of us were so tense that we jumped like greyhounds when we heard the police whistle. We ran into the deserted house facing 221b and up the stairs, truncheons out. 

Turns out we didn't need them. Our quarry was on the ground, and Dr. Watson was standing over him holding his revolver by the barrel and glaring like a tiger; he'd clearly coshed the fellow. God, he was so beautiful at that moment I didn't notice the other man at first, the one pulling himself to his feet. But then that other man spoke, and I felt the gut-punch all over again. That was no dead man nor a hoax with a false voice but Sherlock Holmes in the long lean flesh once again, large as life and twice as natural, and cheeking me over the Molesey case as if he'd never been gone. Took both my lads a good five seconds of gaping before they could pounce on their prey with the darbies, and I couldn't blame them. 

That was how we nicked Colonel Sebastian Moran in the very act of attempted murder, and a murder that I thought had been done 3 years ago by Moran's governor. 

And if I'd had a single doubt left that Sherlock Holmes was back for good and all, I'd only to look at the Doctor standing next to him with his face lit up like a lantern. 

I was glad to see Mr. Holmes back, upon my honour I truly was. But the other part of me, the wicked part, crumpled up inside. 

Well, there's your sign from God, Geoffrey old man. Grateful it weren't a lightning-bolt from heaven or a pillar of salt or some such – more like a police chief slapping a green 'un what forgot to polish his helmet before the inspection. But it was a warning all the same. Happy endings aren't for the likes of you and don't you forget it again.

# 

I'd been going to that smart young university toff for a year or so, at his shabby little flat in Montague Street, ever since he'd pointed me in the right direction when we'd met in Bart's dissection room over the same corpse. He was all smarts and nothing else, then, with no respect for police work. But he loved a good puzzle and didn't care if I got the credit for the case, so I treated him like the gift from God that he was. He was handsome in a sharpish way, but that snide mouth of his soon dispelled any attraction I might have had for him. 

Yes, Sherlock Holmes was queer as a nine-bob note (or a five-foot-four bobby), make no mistake about that. But it was all buried under a load of eccentric habits and personal solitude. You have to be the right class to pull that trick off and I could never do it myself. There's a kind of look to genteel folk – not handsome or fat necessarily, but a sleekness to them, a niceness of appearance, a carelessness of manner, that folk only get if they've never gone to bed hungry a day in their lives, never stayed up worriting over bills, nor moved in the middle of the night one step ahead of the landlord. A tough life made me tough, but it also made me plain and common as a hobnailed boot, a scrawny little titch. I learned most of me police work on the streets before I was ten. I'm not stupid, and I know what country I live in. A queer has to be canny to survive, and I'd learned early never ever to let on. I got in enough fights, and learned how to fight, to erase any doubts by the bigger lads about me by the time I was old enough to laugh at their dirty jokes and tell them myself. Sherlock Holmes took the other way of being queer – hide in plain sight, like that story about the letter. London's lousy with strange toffs and he fit right in with that lot.

One January he moved to Baker Street; he'd acquired a flat-mate which let him share much nicer rooms in a better part of town; Dr. Watson was valuable for that alone. I didn't see much of him at first, when I'd come to the rooms to call on Holmes; all I saw was a thin brown shadow heading up the stairs to his room, with a hitch in his gait that showed he'd been wounded in combat. 

After the Lauriston Gardens business we police saw more and more of Mr. Holmes, and Dr. Watson was with him most times. Mr. Holmes was easier to deal with, and no wonder, for Dr. Watson was your friend in five minutes, offering sympathy for a lost loved one or commiserating about property damage. Mr. Holmes was there looking at everything and solving his puzzles sharp as before, but his appearances were no longer as galling to bereft citizens nor the police, and that was all because of Dr. Watson. 

As the Doctor got better and filled out, I started paying attention. John Watson was a handsome bloke with a sober, steady nature, kind-hearted and gentle with the victims. I'm a professional and I know how to stick to my work, but it was a pleasure to see Dr. Watson at the crime scene even as I headed to Mr. Holmes to fill him in on the situation. If there's a murder in a garden and the roses are bloody gorgeous, you're gonna look at them aren't you? (And look was all I did. Like I said, I'm not bloody stupid.)

I had my suspicions about what those two were to each other. Two good-looking posh fellows, far too warm toward each other to be _friends_ , certainly not the type of friends that upper-class chaps normally make. That was one mystery I kept to myself, for what could I say? "I know you two are queers but I'm one myself as Mr. Holmes no doubt deduced three minutes after our first meeting, so your secret's safe with me"? Mr. Holmes had probably already told the Doctor that I knew about them. Not like either of them was in my league, nor would give me a second look. I didn't ask, stuck to business when I was at Baker Street, and made good and sure to give them plenty of notice when I was coming to call for a case. And I continued to swallow my pride and keep a sharp eye on Mr. Holmes to learn a thing or two.

I knew who I was to them, though, when they asked me to Dartmoor to help bring a murderous brute to justice. That's not nipping over to the local constabulary to beg help, is it? That's when I knew that, snipe at me as Mr. Holmes would, both of them valued and respected me and my work. 

Those trips to 221b to ask for assistance became visits, with tea and cigarettes during daytime and brandy and cigars in the evening. I began to look for cases and crimes that would give me the excuse to turn toward that street. It was so different from my regular haunts when I wasn't working, a whole other world away from the police pub and the occasional foray into the rough dockside places that didn't ask questions or remember faces. Seeing the pair of them in their rented flat that was a home in all but name, completely at ease with each other, gave me a taste of that other life a queer like me wasn't permitted. I could be Dr. Watson's friend and look at him all I liked while I was there, too. 

Dr. Watson and I shared a fondness for snooker and we began to cross cues over a fine table at his club on a regular basis. We laughed at how Sherlock Holmes could drive a man batty, and discovered other things we shared; books we liked, and horses, and operettas. We talked about the worst things we'd ever seen in our work, and the moments that made it worth everything. 

It got so I started to get a faster heartbeat and a lighter head when I knew that I'd be going to Baker Street that day, could barely keep my mind on my work. Was this what all those ruddy books for normal folks talked about? I hadn't known our lot could feel this too – that it wasn't all two blokes buggering each other in a filthy, dangerous dive, dealing in something as illegal as opium and in as nasty a venue, with gaol or death the inevitable end of the business. Was this what Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson felt too? It wasn't just two good-looking chaps who fancied each other? That was more of a revelation than anything Mr. Holmes produced at a crime scene. It hurt like blazes, too. But I couldn't stop going to Baker Street, and being welcomed, and seeing what wasn't mine to have. 

And then that _bastard_ business with the crime syndicate. Weeks of work to catch that pack of wolves, drove everything else out of my head, and it was the same way with them. No time now for brandy and cigars, no snooker, no "Gondoliers." And at the very, very end, it was for naught. Oh we got them all. Almost all. I cursed when I saw that the Professor's was one of the few faces not in the throng we'd arrested, and sent a warning after the pair of them already out of England and fleeing on the Continent. Didn't do any good. He caught up to them – and I felt like I'd been gutted when I got the news that Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty had killed each other in Switzerland.

I met John Watson at the train station. He held himself together but he moved like a clockwork soldier. There was the other side of that arrangement of theirs: Pair up as married in all but name, grieve as widowed in all but name. I stayed with him that first night in Baker Street, sleeping on the sofa in the parlour that still smelled of Mr. Holmes' tobacco, listening to John tossing and turning upstairs. Damned if I didn't keep expecting Mr. Holmes to swirl in at the door and laugh at catching me asleep, telling me it had all been a clever ruse. Police work doesn't stop for one man's death and I was away again at midday back to the station; but I left a note for John about meeting me at The Scales to raise a glass in his memory when he was ready for it. 

There was a memorial service; place was packed and a lot of very important men spoke, but all I remembered was that iron back in the first row. I spoke too, but it wasn't important; I talked about his detection gift and what an asset he'd been to the police and the city, not "He taught me that queers could fall in love." John spoke of a trusted business partner and an invaluable friend as if he was announcing incoming trains; I looked at the little black armband on his grey suit, and I've never hated British law as much as I did then. I didn't see him at the do afterward. 

A week later the pair of us met at The Scales and remembered Mr. Sherlock Holmes properly, over a proper pint – not the marble-statue hero of London but the know-it-all pain in the arse and the great gawky fiddler and the chap who could rattle off blood-spray patterns one moment and Donne's poetry the next. John didn't look any better, and didn't pretend he was; said he couldn't stay in Baker Street any longer, couldn't bear the place now, and when he could think of living matters again he'd set out and find a new flat. My mouth opened before I could stop it, and told him he was welcome to stay with me, trade one bachelor's digs for another's. I thought he'd wring my hand off he gripped it so hard saying thank you. 

I learned, the same way that Mr. Holmes must have done, that John Watson was an easy man to live with – kept everything soldier-neat in his corner, always returned the sofa to its day use when he was done sleeping, didn't take up much room. The first weeks he didn't do much besides sit and stare at the wall and eat my cooking, and I didn't expect him to. I left him to his own devices and he was fine with that. 

Nearly three months after Switzerland I came home early (by which I mean I left the police station on time), and caught him having a cry, and I was gutted all over again. I could have backed out and gone to The Scales and left him his dignity, and most would say I should have done; a soldier and a man has his pride. But I had a lifetime of debt to repay for not catching the Professor when I had the chance, and I stepped forward instead. John didn't react when I sat beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. When he could speak again, he told me that he'd just received notice from a solicitor that Sherlock Holmes had left him a pile and could he come and sign a few papers. I sat there while he raged and swore and wept all at once, and never took my hand away. When he was quiet I said that if he wanted, I could go with him to the solicitor's office as a witness and for moral support. When he snapped that he didn't want a penny of it, I reminded him that medicines and office rentals weren't free, and if he wasn't able to support himself just now as a doctor Mr. Holmes wouldn't want him destitute at such a time, any more than he himself would want Holmes wasting away to nothing if Watson had been the one to die taking out that bastard. It worked; he agreed to the offer and thanked me. (I've had to say a few comforting words to too many broken people, and I'm not bad at it if I say so myself.) 

…Well, it was a pile. I kept him from giving me a half-pile of it, grieving people don't think straight and I didn't want him regretting anything. Told him, very firm, that at the moment I'd accept only enough of that estate that would buy a pint or two. He looked at me, nodded, and said he'd pick the place.

Oh, that place. My stomach tied itself in knots, my heart hammering, when I recognised the moneyed section of the city where the cab let us out, and we walked a few blocks to a high-walled club fine enough for titled men to join. The Dorado was no dockside gin-shop. This was the proof that he knew. When I gave a panicked look down at what I was wearing for such a place, John laughed. He _laughed_. "Don't worry, Geoffrey, you look fine." And it was fine. It was like John's regular club save for the passwords exchanged at the gate, and the blokes here held hands and kissed each other at tables. And here John held my hand, and told me what my support had meant to him during his grief, and he kissed me. 

Pushing John away was the single hardest thing I've ever done; but grieving people don't think straight. Firm; not very firm, but firm enough. "No more, for now." 

John nodded, and kept hold of my hand when he ordered the second round. I barely touched that beer. 

We went back home. John retired to his sleeping sofa, and I lay in my bed thinking of the man on the other side of the wall, and the one who'd died in Switzerland. 

I was right to stop him. I was his friend first. And we stayed friends in the months following, including after the fifth month when John kissed me again and this time I kissed him back. He didn't sleep on the sofa that night. Now I learned how it was when you knew and liked the bloke you were shagging. What it was like to kiss a bloke, not just bugger him. What a difference, to share illegalities with a man over a bed, and afterward with that same man share a laugh over a snooker table or a discussion of Kipling over a glass of whiskey. 

"I can't go back to my practise, Geoff," he said one night afterward. "I want to do the work we'd done before. Sherlock and I." He said it without choking on the name. 

A doctor's-eye view of crime? Even I could deduce that conclusion. "Forensics, yeah?" 

He laughed again; it wasn't such a rare sound any more. That was that settled. 

I was a bit afraid, that first crime scene together, but as John did his work examining the body and taking notes all I thought about was making sure we caught whoever'd done this to that poor devil and bringing him to justice, and taking in everything discovered by the team at the site. I thanked the doctor for his help and got only his usual friendly smile. And that was how I learned what it was like to work with the same bloke you were shagging on a regular basis. 

This new life had lessons around every curve. Finally made me understand a lot of things about the marrieds in the squad, and even to pity some of them. 

My flat became our flat when John insisted on going halves on the rent. New books appeared on the shelves, and a few new pictures on the wall. We kept John's original bedclothes in their usual folded state beneath the sofa so the hired girl wouldn't suspect. Work was hard, petty and not-so-petty crime continued apace, both of us mourned the loss of our mutual friend, and I was happier than I'd been in years. That, I kept mostly mum about, since John had had a stronger tie to Mr. Holmes, though he was dead decent about it (never compared us at certain times, if you take my meaning). 

We visited the Dorado to mark special occasions, and at The Scales the other coppers hailed John as one of them. We two kept a small Christmas that first year, and a jollier one the next, and were engrossed with a case the next, making up for it with cold fowl and exchanged gifts at the New Year. The pang of guilt that wrapped our grief faded, blurred, and became reason (that man was a monster, we all did our very best work, and it's a wonder any of us three survived). We celebrated our birthdays together; I also raised a glass with John every January 6 to mark Mr. Holmes' birthday, and there was no talking to him on May 4. 

We'd been together for over a year when John returned to his writing desk, once again sending stories about Holmes to the reading public. At first I felt as if I was playing second-fiddle to a dead man, but John was as tender and passionate with me as ever, and I realised that he was simply trying to keep an extraordinary man's memory alive in the world. (I once challenged him about his depictions: "'Sallow'? 'Rat-faced'?" John laughed and kissed me: "Geoff, no one will suspect that we're lovers if I alter your appearance enough in that description. It's as necessary as my creation of a Mrs. Watson.")

I hadn't known such a life was possible, that wickedness and sin could feel so much like coming home. Queers don't get happy endings, everyone knows that; such affairs all end in death or gaol or repentance, even in the pornographic novels. But John showed no signs of wearying of me, or of pining for another; we remained friends and work-mates as well as lovers. I sank into that life like settling into a comfortable arm-chair.

…So of course the Honourable Ronald Adair got himself shot dead in a locked room, and I made the mistake of agreeing with John that it was a pity Sherlock Holmes wasn't here to shine some light on the mystery. That must have been just enough of a prayer or wish to awaken St. Michael's intercession. 

The next day I walked into my office, mind wholly focused on the Adair murder, and there was a telegram waiting for me. I didn't drop in a faint but I came damn close, everything black and light-headed and swirly, and I had to grip the desk to keep from sliding out of my chair. Had enough presence of mind to go to the door and snap that I wasn't to be disturbed till I unlocked, and then spent an hour rebutting the part of me arguing that it was a cruel prank, or a red herring (false: that small detail in the wire only Mr. Holmes or John would know). I fought the increasing realisation that I'd just turned into Lord St. Simon at the bleeding altar. After an hour my stomach was in my shoes but I'd mostly made myself agree that I would release my claim on John, and let him have this miracle that had landed in our laps. There's loads of fellows who lose their beaus to death, to indifference, distance, another lover, marriage; there's precious few who have a long-lost spouse come back from the bloody dead. (And precious few who lose their beaus because their old spouse came back from the bloody dead, lucky me.)

Sherlock Holmes back meant John Watson was gone; but the man was an asset to Scotland Yard and to the city, and if I was no longer a lover I was still a police inspector. I opened my office door and called Wilkins and Rance over. 

# 

The pair of them finally stopped gaping long enough to drag Moran off to the mariah downstairs. That left the three of us in that wreck of an abandoned room, together for the first time in three years. Sherlock Holmes was not well-looking but he was smiling a little with his final victory over the Professor. John Watson stood beside him as of old, the last of their enemies defeated and Death himself seemingly unable to part them. Both men looked at me. 

Open your damn mouth and free him, Geoffrey. Queers like you don't get happy endings, but at least you can give John his. It'll only be worse the longer you wait. 

But Holmes spoke first. "Wedlock suits you as it does John, Lestrade. You have gained some badly-needed flesh and are easier in your manner since last I saw you. My heartiest congratulations to you both." 

Now I gaped. 

John laughed – a lighter, happier laugh than I'd heard in a long time. "Sherlock, the least you could have done was let me tell you!" And he walked over and kissed me right in front of Sherlock Holmes. Who smiled at the pair of us like a proud best man at a wedding instead of raging like an abandoned former lover. Again everything went light-headed and swirly, and why I didn't faint that time was a mystery. 

"Inspector Lestrade, I fear you have reached an incorrect conclusion once again," Holmes said, not unkindly. "I think perhaps you and John had best come with me to that much cosier room across the street." 

I may have nodded or said something at that, for the next thing I knew I was on the familiar old sofa in that familiar parlour (the damn place hadn't changed at all, except for the papered-over window and the mutilated wax bust). John sat next to me on the sofa, his hand in mine, while Mr. Sherlock Holmes told a story that began where we'd thought his had ended. More travel and adventure than Phileas Fogg, and all Mr. Holmes had wanted was to nick the last and worst of the Professor's gang and go home to London and see his dear friend Watson. 

Friend. Watson. 

Oh Geoffrey, you bloody idiot. 

That night I learned that queers could be friends with each other and share rooms as friends without shagging each other. That Mr. Holmes called himself "an indifferent" when it came to the physical parts of queer life; trust Sherlock Holmes to be queer even among other queers. John had taken a fancy to me not long after I'd done the same for him, but had been as reluctant as myself to broach the subject ("I saw myself as a broken man, a penniless Army doctor, and I hadn't wanted you tied to such a one" – so I wasn't the only bloody idiot in that room). After Switzerland, John had been as stricken as would any soldier who blamed his own lapse in protection for his best friend's death. It was a lot to soak in, and I half-believed I was dreaming. 

"Both of you will always have a place at 221b," Holmes said, "and neither need wait for the occasion of a peculiar case to drop by for a snifter and a Toscano."

Work, and love, and friendship. Not death, nor gaol, nor repentance. This miracle had landed in my lap too. 

"I reckon we'll be three for Christmas this year at our place, Mr. Holmes," I said as John grinned ear to ear, and what a joyful sight that was. "On one condition." 

Sherlock Holmes smiled – oh he was back all right, could the sod _not_ deduce every bloody thing one was about to say? "Of course, Geoffrey. If you will call me Sherlock in turn."


End file.
